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Historical and Political Essays, by William 1

HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS

by

WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY

Longmans, Green, and Co. 39 Paternoster Row, London New York, Bombay, and Calcutta 1908 All rights

reserved

CONTENTS

PAGE THOUGHTS ON HISTORY 1

THE POLITICAL VALUE OF HISTORY 21

THE EMPIRE: ITS VALUE AND ITS GROWTH 43

IRELAND IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY 68

FORMATIVE INFLUENCES 90

CARLYLE'S MESSAGE TO HIS AGE 104

ISRAEL AMONG THE NATIONS 116

MADAME DE STAËL 131

THE PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR ROBERT PEEL 151

THE FIFTEENTH EARL OF DERBY 200

MR. HENRY REEVE 242

DEAN MILMAN 249

QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MORAL FORCE 275

OLD-AGE PENSIONS 298

INDEX 319

The Essays 'Thoughts on History,' 'Formative Influences,' 'Madame de Staël,' 'Israel among the Nations,'

'Old-age Pensions,' appeared originally in the American Review, the Forum--the first under the title of 'The

Art of Writing History'; 'Ireland in the Light of History,' in the North American Review. Those on Sir Robert

Peel, Mr. Henry Reeve, and Dean Milman were written for the Edinburgh Review. The Essay on 'Queen

Victoria as a Moral Force' appeared first in the Pall Mall Magazine; 'Carlyle's Message to His Age' in the

Contemporary Review. 'The Political Value of History' was a presidential address delivered before the

Birmingham and Midland Institute; 'The Empire,' an inaugural address delivered at the Imperial Institute; and

the 'Memoir of the Fifteenth Earl of Derby' was originally prefixed to the volumes of his speeches and

addresses.

Historical and Political Essays, by William 2

HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS

THOUGHTS ON HISTORY

I do not propose in this paper to enter into any general inquiry about the best method of writing history. Such

inquiries appear to me to be of no real value, for there are many different kinds of history which should be

written in many different ways. A diplomatic, a military, or a parliamentary history, dealing with a short

period or a particular episode, must evidently be treated in a very different spirit from an extended history

where the object of the historian should be to describe the various aspects of the national life, and to trace

through long periods of time the ultimate causes of national progress and decay. The history of religion, of art,

of literature, of social and industrial development, of scientific progress, have all their different methods. A

writer who treats of some great revolution that has transformed human affairs should deal largely in

retrospect, for the most important part of his task is to explain the long course of events that prepared and

produced the catastrophe; while a writer who treats of more normal times will do well to plunge rapidly into

his theme.

Historians, too, differ widely in their special talents, and these talents are never altogether combined. The

power of vividly realising and portraying men, or societies or modes of thought that have long since passed

away; the power of arranging and combining great multitudes of various facts; the power of judging with

discrimination, accuracy, and impartiality conflicting arguments or evidence; the power of tracing through the

long course of events the true chain of cause and effect, selecting the facts that are most valuable and

significant and explaining the relation between general causes and particular effects, are all very different and

belong to different types of mind. It is idle to expect a writer with the gifts of a Clarendon, a Kinglake, or a

Froude to write history in the spirit of a Hallam or a Grote. Writers who are eminently distinguished for wide,

patient, and accurate research have sometimes little power either of describing or interpreting the facts which

they collect. All that can be said with any profit is that each writer will do best if he follows the natural bent of

his genius, and that he should select those kinds or periods of history in which his special gifts have most

scope and the qualities in which he is deficient are least needed.

It is the fashion of a modern school of historical writers to deplore what they call the intrusion of literature

into history. History, in their judgment, should be treated as science and not as literature, and the kind of

intellect they most value is not unlike that of a skilful and well-trained attorney. To collect documents with

industry; to compare, classify, interpret and estimate them is the main work of the historian. It is no doubt true

that there are some fields of history where the primary facts are so little known, so much contested or so

largely derived from recondite manuscript sources, that a faithful historian will be obliged in justice to his

readers to sacrifice both proportion and artistic charm to the supreme importance of analysing evidence,

reproducing documents and accumulating proofs; but in general the depreciation of the literary element in

history seems to me essentially wrong. It is only necessary to recall the names of Herodotus and Thucydides,

of Livy and Tacitus, of Gibbon and Macaulay, and of the long line of great masters of style who have related

the annals of France. It may, indeed, be confidently asserted that there is no subject in which rarer literary

qualities are more demanded than in the higher forms of history. The art of portraying characters; of

describing events; of compressing, arranging, and selecting great masses of heterogeneous facts, of

conducting many different chains of narrative without confusion or obscurity; of preserving in a vast and

complicated subject the true proportion and relief, will tax the highest literary skill, and no one who does not

possess some, at least, of these gifts in an unusual measure is likely to attain a permanent place among the

great masters of history. It is a misfortune when some stirring and momentous period falls into the hands of

the mere compiler, for he occupies the ground and a really great writer will hesitate to appropriate and

plagiarise the materials his predecessor has collected. There are books of great research and erudition which

one would have wished to have been all re-written by some writer of real genius who could have given order,

meaning and vividness to a mere chaos of accurate and laboriously sifted learning. The great prominence

which it is now the fashion to ascribe to the study of diplomatic documents, is very apt to destroy the true

value and perspective of history. It is always the temptation of those who are dealing with manuscript

Historical and Political Essays, by William 3

materials to overrate the small personal details which they bring to light, and to give them much more than

their due space in their narrative. This tendency the new school powerfully encourages. It is quite right that

the treasure-houses of diplomatic correspondence which have of late years been thrown open should be

explored and sifted, but history written chiefly from these materials, though it has its own importance, is not

likely to be distinguished either by artistic form or by philosophical value. Those who are immersed in these

studies are very apt to overrate their importance and the part which diplomacy and statesmanship have borne

in the great movement of human affairs.

A true and comprehensive history should be the life of a nation. It should describe it in its larger and more

various aspects. It should be a study of causes and effects, of distant as well as proximate causes, and of the

large, slow and permanent evolution of things. It should include, as Buckle and Macaulay saw, the social, the

industrial, the intellectual life of the nation as well as mere political changes, and it should be pre-eminently

marked by a true perspective dealing with subjects at a length proportioned to their real importance. All this

requires a powerful and original intellect quite different from that of a mere compiler. It requires too, in a high

degree, the kind of imagination which enables a man to reproduce not only the acts but the feelings, the ideals,

the modes of thought and life of a distant past, and pierce through the actions and professions of men to their

real characters. Insight into character is one of the first requisites of a historian. It is therefore, much to be

desired that he should possess a wide knowledge of the world, the knowledge of different types of character,

foreign as well as English, which travel and society and practical experience of business can give, and it will

also be of no small advantage to him if he has passed through more than one intellectual or religious phase,

widening the area of his appreciation and realisations. He should also have enough of the dramatic element to

enable him to throw himself into ways of reasoning or feeling very different from his own. One of the most

valuable of all forms of historical imagination is that which enables a writer to place himself in the point of

view of the best men on different sides, and to bring out the full sense of opposing arguments. All these gifts

or qualities are never in a high degree united, but they are all essential to a great historian, and a true school of

history should widen instead of narrowing our conception of it.

The supreme virtue of the historian is truthfulness, and it may be violated in many different degrees. The

worst form is when a writer deliberately falsifies facts or deliberately excludes from his picture qualifying

circumstances. But there are other and much more subtle ways in which party spirit continually and often

quite unconsciously distorts history. All history is necessarily a selection of facts, and a writer who is

animated by a strong sympathy with one side of a question or a strong desire to prove some special point will

be much tempted in his selection to give an undue prominence to those that support his view, or, even where

neither facts nor arguments are suppressed, to give a party character to his work by an unfair distribution of

lights and shades. The strong and vivid epithets are chiefly reserved for the good or bad deeds on one side, the

vague, general and comparatively colourless epithets for the corresponding deeds on the other side; and in this

way very similar facts are brought before the reader with such different degrees of illumination and relief that

they make a wholly different impression on his mind. In the history of Macaulay this defect may, I think, be

especially traced. The characteristic defect of that great and in most respects admirable writer, both as

historian and artist, was the singular absence of graduation in his mind. The neutral tints which are essential to

the accurate shading of character seemed almost wanting, and a love of strong contrasted lights and shades,

coupled with his supreme command of powerful epithets, continually misled him. But no attentive reader can

fail to observe how unequally those epithets are distributed and how clearly this inequality discloses the

strong bias under which he wrote.

The truth of an historical picture lies mainly in its judicious and accurate shading, and it is this art which the

historian should especially cultivate. He will scarcely do so with success unless it becomes to him not merely

a matter of duty, but also a pleasure and a pride. The kind of interest which he takes in his narrative should be

much less that of a politician and an advocate than of a painter, who, now darkening and now lightening the

picture, seeks by many delicate touches to catch with exact fidelity the tone and hue of the object he

represents.

Historical and Political Essays, by William 4

The degree of certainty that it is possible to attain in history varies greatly in different departments. The

growth of institutions and laws, military events, changes in manners and in creeds, can be described with

much confidence, and although it is more difficult to depict the inner moral life of nations, the influences that

form their characters and prepare them for greatness or decay, yet when the materials for our induction are

sufficiently large this field of history may be studied with great profit. Diplomatic history and the more secret

springs of political history can only be fully disclosed when the archives relating to them have been explored

and when the confidential correspondence of the chief actors in them has been published. The biographical

element in history is always the most uncertain. Even among contemporaries the judgment of character and

motives depends largely on indications so slight and subtle that they rarely pass into books and are only fully

felt by direct personal contact, and the smallest knowledge of life shows how quickly anecdotes and sayings

are distorted, coloured, and misplaced when they pass from lip to lip. Most of the 'good sayings' of history are

invention, and most of them have been attributed to different persons. A history which is plainly written under

the influence of party bias has the value of an advocate's speech giving one side of the question. When our

only materials for the knowledge of a period are derived from such histories, the saying of Voltaire should be

remembered--that we can confidently believe only the evil which a party writer tells of his own side and the

good which he recognises in his opponents. In judging the historian we must consider his nearness to the

events he relates, his probable means of information and the internal evidence in his narrative of accuracy,

honesty, and judgment, and we must also consider the standard of proof and the methods of historical writing

prevailing in his time. A modern writer who placed in the mouths of his personages speeches which he

himself invented would be justly discredited, but in antiquity it was a recognised custom for a historian to

embody in fictitious speeches the reflections suggested by his narrative and the motives which he believed to

have actuated his heroes.

Different ages differ enormously in the severity of proof which they exact, in the degree of accuracy which

they attain. The credibility of a statement also depends not only on the amount of its evidence, but also on its

own inherent probability. Everyone will feel that an amount of testimony that would be quite sufficient to

persuade him that a butcher's boy had been seen driving along a highway is wholly different from that which

would be required to persuade him that a ghost had been met there. The same rule applies to the history of the

past, and it is complicated by the great difference in different ages of the measure of probability, or, in other

words, by the strong predisposition in certain stages of knowledge to accept statements or explanations of

facts which in later stages we know to be incredible or in a high degree improbable. Few subjects in history

are more difficult than the laws of evidence in dealing with the supernatural and the extent to which the

authority of historians in relating credible and probable facts is invalidated by the presence of a mythical

element in their narratives.

Connected with this subject is also the question how far it is possible by merely internal evidence to

decompose an ancient document, resolving it into its separate elements, distinguishing its different dates and

its different degrees of credibility. The reader is no doubt aware with what a rare skill this method of inquiry

has been pursued in the present century, chiefly by great German and Dutch scholars, in dealing with the early

Jewish writings. At the same time, without disputing the value of their work or the importance of many of the

results at which they have arrived, I may be pardoned for expressing my belief that this kind of investigation

is often pursued with an exaggerated confidence. Plausible conjecture is too frequently mistaken for positive

proof. Undue significance is attached to what may be mere casual coincidences, and a minuteness of accuracy

is professed in discriminating between the different elements in a narrative which cannot be attained by mere

internal evidence. In all writings, but especially in the writings of an age when criticism was unknown, there

will be repetitions, contradictions, inconsistencies and diversities of style which do not necessarily indicate

different authorship or dates.

I have spoken of the uncertainty of the biographical element in history. It must, however, be said that when a

historian is dealing with men who have played a very prominent part on the stage of life, the general

acceptance of his judgment is a strong corroboration of its truth. It may be added that the later judgment of

men is not unfrequently more true than the contemporary judgment. The wisdom of a teaching or of a policy

Historical and Political Essays, by William 5

is shown by its results, and these results are in most cases very gradually disclosed. Great men are like great

mountains which are surrounded by lower peaks that often obscure their grandeur and seem to a near observer

to equal or even to overtop them. It is only when seen from far off that their true dimensions are fully realised

and they soar to heaven above all rivals. In the page of history men are judged mainly by the net result of their

lives, by the broad lines of their characters and achievements. Many injudicious words, many minor

weaknesses of conduct, are forgotten. Faults of manner, deficiencies of tact, awkwardnesses of appearance,

which tell so largely upon the judgments of contemporaries, are no longer seen. The conversational

nimbleness and versatility of intellect, the charm or assurance or magnetism of manner, the weight of social

position, all of which tend to secure to an inferior man a pre-eminence in the circle in which he moves, are

equally evanescent, and the shy, rugged, and tactless recluse often emerges on the strength of his genuine and

abiding performances to a position in the eyes of the world which he never attained during his lifetime.

That fine saying of Cardan, 'Tempus mea possessio, tempus ager meus,' might be the motto of the historian.

Time is the field which he cultivates, and a true sense of space and distance should be one of the chief

characteristics of his work. Few things are more difficult to attain than a just perspective in history. The most

dramatic incidents are not the most important, and in weighing the joys and sorrows of the past our measures

of judgment are almost hopelessly false. The most humane man cannot emancipate himself from the law of

his nature, according to which he is more affected by some tragic circumstance which has taken place in his

own house or in his own street than by a catastrophe which has carried anguish and desolation over enormous

areas in a distant continent. In history, too, there are vast tracts which are almost necessarily unrealised. We

judge a period mainly by its great men, by its brilliant or salient incidents, by the fortunes of a small class; and

the great mass of obscure, suffering, inarticulate humanity, whose happiness is often so profoundly affected

by political and military events, almost escapes our notice. It should be the object of history to bring before us

past events in their true proportion and significance, and one of the greatest improvements in modern history

is the increased attention which is paid to the social, industrial, and moral history of the poor. The paucity of

our information and the difficulty of realising the conditions of obscure multitudes will always make this

branch of history very imperfect, but it is one of the most essential to the just judgment of the past.

Another task which lies before the historian is that of distinguishing proximate from ultimate causes. Our first

natural impulse is to attribute a great change to the men who effected it and to the period in which it took

place, and to neglect or underrate the long train of causes which had been, often through many generations,

preparing its advent. A faithful historian must especially guard against this error. He must study the slow

process of growth as well as the moment of efflorescence, the long progress of decay as well as the final

catastrophe. He will probably find that the part played by statesmen and legislatures is less than he had

imagined, and that the causes of the movements he relates must be sought over a wider area and through a

longer period.

Moral, intellectual, or economical movements very slightly connected with political life are often those which

have most largely contributed to the good or evil fortunes of a nation; and even in the sphere of politics it is

not the events which attract the most vivid contemporary interest that have the most enduring influence. Few

things contribute so much to the formation of the social type as the laws regulating the succession of property

and especially the agglomeration or division of landed property. The growth of militarism in a nation, besides

its direct and obvious consequences, forms a type of character which will sooner or later show itself in almost

every department of legislation, and the tendency of politics to enlarge or narrow the sphere of individual

liberty or of government control, will affect most deeply the habits of the people. Laws regulating private

enterprises, substituting State control or initiative for individual action, encouraging or discouraging thrift,

and above all interfering with free contracts, have much more than an immediate influence, for they become

the prolific parents of many further extensions. In the words of an excellent observer, it will be found 'that our

legislative interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions, every subsequent interference being

naturally produced by the effects of the preceding.' It is by studying such tendencies through long periods of

time that their good or evil influences may be best discovered, and this should be one of the great tasks of the

historian.

Historical and Political Essays, by William 6

But, however large a part may be given to the impersonal influences in history, he will still be largely

concerned with the record of individual achievements, and the great men of the past will form the most

conspicuous landmarks of his narrative. I have often thought, however, that nations are judged too much by

the great men they have produced and not sufficiently by the way in which they have discriminated among

them and appreciated them. Genius is like the wind that bloweth where it listeth, and it often appears in

strangely uncongenial quarters. The true nobility of a nation is shown by the men they choose, by the men

they follow, by the men they admire, by the ideals of character and conduct they place before them. Tried by

such tests, there is often much that is profoundly saddening in the history of countries that have been far from

poor in the number of their great men.

In the judgment of historical characters there are two cautions on which it may not be useless to dwell. There

is a large class of public men who show little capacity in dealing with or directing the present conditions of

their time, but who see clearly the bourne to which existing forces or tendencies are moving and who, judged

by their distant forecasts, will appear much wiser than their contemporaries. It is the natural bias of the

historian to place them perhaps higher than they deserve. This power of just speculative foresight is no very

rare gift, and in public affairs it is often as much a hindrance as a help. Forms of government and other great

religious or political institutions, like the products of nature, have their times of immaturity, of growth, of

ripeness and of decay, and it by no means follows because they at last become indefensible, that they have not

during many generations discharged useful functions and that those who first assailed and condemned them

are deserving of praise. Not unfrequently, indeed, a public man must take his choice whether by fully

identifying himself with the existing conditions around him and employing them to the best advantages he

will lead a useful and practical life, or whether as an advanced thinker he will associate himself with the cause

that is one day to conquer, place himself in the van of progress and at the sacrifice of much present influence

deserve the credit of foresight.

Historians will probably always judge men and policies by their net results, by their final consequences, and

this judgment is on the whole the most sure that we can attain. It is not, however, altogether infallible. Apart

from the question of the moral character of the methods employed which a good historian should never omit

from his consideration, success is not always a decisive proof of sagacity. Chance and the unexpected play a

great part in human affairs, and a judgment founded on a perfectly just estimate of probabilities will often

prove wrong. The result which was the least probable will come true, some wholly unforeseen and

unforeseeable occurrence will scatter dangers that were very real and give a new complexion to events. The

rise of some pre-eminently great or of some pre-eminently mischievous personage among the guiding

influences of a nation will derange the most sagacious calculations, and the reckless gambler or the obtuse

obstructionist may prove more right than the most cautious, the most skilful, the most farseeing statesman.

A fatal and very common error is that of judging the actions of the past by the moral standard of our own age.

This is especially the error of novices in history and of those who without any wide and general culture devote

themselves exclusively to a single period. While the primary and essential elements of right and wrong remain

unchanged, nothing is more certain than that the standard or ideal of duty is continually altering. A very

humane man in another age may have done things which would now be regarded as atrociously barbarous. A

very virtuous man may have done things which would now indicate extreme profligacy. We seldom indeed

make sufficient allowance for the degree in which the judgments and dispositions of even the best man are

coloured by the moral tone of the time or society in which they live. And what is true of individuals is equally

true of nations. In order to judge equitably the legislation of any people, we must always consider

corresponding contemporary legislations and ideas. When this is neglected our judgments of the past become

wholly false. How often, for example, has such a subject as the history of the penal laws against Irish

Catholics been treated without the smallest reference to the contemporary laws against Protestants that existed

in every Catholic nation and the contemporary laws against Catholics that existed in almost every Protestant

country in Europe. How often have the English commercial restrictions on the American colonies been treated

as if they were instances of extreme and exceptional tyranny, while a more extended knowledge would show

that they were simply the expression of ideas of commercial policy and about the relation of dependencies to

Historical and Political Essays, by William 7

the mother-country which then almost universally prevailed.

It is not merely the moral standard that changes. A corresponding change takes place in the moral type, or, in

other words, in the class of virtues which is especially cultivated and especially valued. To know an age aright

we should above all things seek to understand its ideal, the direction in which the stream of its self-sacrifice

and moral energy naturally flowed. Few things in history are more interesting and more valuable than a study

of the causes that produced and modified these successive ideals. Thus in the moral type of pagan antiquity

the civic virtues occupied incomparably the foremost place. The idea of a supremely good man was

essentially that of a man of action, of a man whose whole life was devoted to the service of his country. The

life and death of Cato were for generations the favourite model. He was deemed, in the words of an old Latin

historian, to be of all men the one 'most like to virtue.' This pattern retained its force till the softening

influence of the Greek spirit, permeating Roman life, made the stoical ideal seem too hard and

unsympathising; till the corruption and despotism of the Empire had withdrawn the best men from political

life and attached a certain taint or stigma to public employment; till new religions arose in the East, bringing

with them new ideals to govern the world. Gradually we may trace the contemplative virtues rising to the

foremost place until, about the fifth century, the ideal had totally changed. The heroic type was replaced by

the saintly type. The supremely good man was now the ascetic. The first condition of sanctity was a complete

abandonment of secular duties and cares and a complete subjugation of the body. A vast literature of legends

arose reflecting and glorifying the prevailing ideal and holding up the hermit life as the supreme pattern of

perfection, and this literature occupies a place in mediævalism very similar to that held by the 'Lives' of

Plutarch in antiquity.

Ancient art was essentially the glorification of the body, a representation of the full strength and beauty of

developed manhood. The saint of the mediæval mosaic represents the body in its extreme maceration and

humiliation. The rhetorician, Dio Chrysostom, in a somewhat whimsical passage, which was suggested by a

remark of Plato, found a special moral significance in the fact that Homer, though he places his heroes on the

the banks of what he calls 'the fishy Hellespont,' never makes them eat fish, but always flesh and the flesh of

oxen, for this, as he says, is 'strength-producing food' and is therefore suited for the formation of heroes and

the proper diet for men of virtue. Compare this judgment with the protracted, and indeed incredible, fasts

which the monkish writers delighted in attributing to the saints of the desert, and we have a vivid picture of

the change that had passed over the ideal.

But as time moved on the ascetic ideal gradually declined and was replaced by the very different ideal of

chivalry. It consisted chiefly of three new elements. The first element was a spirit of gallantry which gave

women a wholly new place in the imaginations of men. It was in part a reaction against the extreme austerity

of the saints, and this reaction was much intensified after the cessation of the panic which had risen at the

close of the tenth century about the approaching end of the world. It was in part produced by the softer and

more epicurean civilisation which grew up in the country bordering on the Pyrenees. It was especially

represented in the romances and poems of the Troubadours, and the new tendency even received some

assistance from the Church when the Council of Clermont, which originated the Crusades, imposed on the

knight the religious obligation of defending all widows and orphans.

The second element was an increased reverence for secular rank, which grew out of the feudal system, when a

great hereditary aristocracy arose and all European society was moulded into a compact hierarchy, of which

the serf was the basis and the emperor the apex. The principle of subordination and obedience ran through the

whole edifice, and a respect for rank was universally diffused. Men came to associate their ideal of greatness

with regal or noble authority, and they were therefore prepared to idealise any great sovereign who might

arise. Such a sovereign appeared in Charlemagne, who exercised upon Christendom a fascination not less

powerful than that which Alexander had once exercised upon Greece, and he accordingly soon became the

centre of a whole literature of romance.

The third element was the fusion of religious enthusiasm with the military spirit. Christianity in its first phases

Historical and Political Essays, by William 8

was utterly opposed to the military spirit; but this opposition was naturally mitigated when the Church

triumphed under Constantine and became associated with governments and armies. The hostility was still

further qualified when many tribes of warlike barbarians embraced the faith, and the military obligation which

was an essential element of feudalism acted in the same direction. But, above all, the rise and conquests of

Mohammedanism awoke the military energies of Christendom and determined the direction it should take. In

the Crusades the two great streams of military enthusiasm and of religious enthusiasm met, and the result was

the formation of a new ideal which for a long period mainly governed the imagination of Christendom.

It for a time absorbed, eclipsed, and transformed all purely national ideals. No poet was ever more intensely

English in his character and sympathies than Chaucer, and he wrote when the dazzling glories of Crécy and

Poitiers were still very recent. Yet it is not on these fields, but in the long wars with the Moslems, that his

pattern knight had won his renown. The military expeditions of Charlemagne were directed almost

exclusively against the Saxons and against Slavonic tribes. With the Spanish Mohammedans he came but very

slightly in contact. He made in person but one expedition against them, and that expedition was both

insignificant and unsuccessful. But in the Karlovingian romances, which were written when the crusading

enthusiasm was at its height, the figure of the great emperor underwent a strange and most significant

transformation. The German wars were scarcely noticed. Charlemagne is surrounded with the special glory

that ought to have belonged to Charles Martel. He is represented as having passed his entire life in a victorious

struggle with the Mohammedans of Europe, and is even gravely credited with a triumphant expedition to

Jerusalem. The three romances of the Crusades which are believed to be the oldest were all written by monks,

and they all make Charlemagne their hero. Even geography was transformed by the new enthusiasm, and old

maps sometimes represent Jerusalem as the centre of the world.

In few periods has there been so great a difference between the ideals created by the popular imagination and

the realities that are recognised by history. Few wars have been accompanied by more cruelty, more outrage,

and more licentiousness than the Crusades or have brought a blacker cloud of disasters in their train. Yet the

idea that inspired them was a lofty one, and they were so speedily transfigured by the imaginations of men

that in combination with the other influences I have mentioned they created an ideal which is one of the most

beautiful in the history of the world. We may trace it clearly in the romances of Arthur and Charlemagne and

of the "Cid;" in the "Red-Cross Knight" of Tasso and Spenser; in the old ballads which paint so vividly the

hero of chivalry, ever ready to draw his sword for his faith and his lady-love and in the cause of the feeble and

the oppressed. The glorification of military courage and self-sacrifice which had been so prominent in

antiquity was again in the ascendant, but it was combined with a new kind of honour and with a new vein of

courtesy, modesty, and gentleness. When we apply the epithet 'chivalrous' to a modern gentleman, this is no

unmeaning term. There is even now an element in that character which may be distinctly traced to the ideal of

chivalry which the Crusades made dominant in Europe.

I do not propose to follow the history of other ideals that have in turn prevailed. What I have written will, I

trust, be sufficient to illustrate a kind of history which appears to me to possess much interest and value. It

will show, too, that a faithful historian is very largely concerned with the fictions as well as with the facts of

the past. Legends which have no firm historical basis are often of the highest historical value as reflecting the

moral sentiments of their time. Nor do they merely reflect them. In some periods they contribute perhaps more

than any other influence to mould and colour them and to give them an enduring strength. The facts of history

have been largely governed by its fictions. Great events often acquire their full power over the human mind

only when they have passed through the transfiguring medium of the imagination, and men as they were

supposed to be have even sometimes exercised a wider influence than men as they actually were. Ideals

ultimately rule the world, and each before it loses its ascendancy bequeaths some moral truth as an abiding

legacy to the human race.

THE POLITICAL VALUE OF HISTORY

Historical and Political Essays, by William 9

When, shortly after I had accepted the honourable task which I am endeavouring to fulfil to-night, I received

from your Secretary a report of the annual proceedings of the Birmingham and Midland Institute,--when I

observed the immense range and variety of subjects included within your programme, illustrating so strikingly

the intense intellectual activity of this great town,--my first feeling was one of some bewilderment and

dismay. What, I asked myself, could I say that would be of much real value, addressing an unknown audience,

and relating to fields of knowledge so vast, so multifarious, and in many of their parts so far beyond the range

of my own studies? On reflection, however, it appeared to me that in this, as in most other cases, the proverb

was a wise one which bids the cobbler stick to his last, and that a writer who, during many years of his life,

has been engaged in the study of English history could hardly do better than devote the time at his disposal

to-night to a few reflections on the political value of history, and on the branches and methods of historical

study that are most fitted to form a sound political judgment.

Is history a study of real use in practical, and especially in political, life? The question, as you know, has been

by no means always answered in the same way. In its earlier stages history was regarded chiefly as a form of

poetry recording the more dramatic actions of kings, warriors, and statesmen. Homer and the early ballads are

indeed the first historians of their countries, and long after Homer one of the most illustrious of the critics of

antiquity described history as merely 'poetry free from the incumbrance of verse.' The portraits that adorned it

gave some insight into human character; it breathed noble sentiments, rewarded and stimulated noble actions,

and kindled by its strong appeals to the imagination high patriotic feeling; but its end was rather to paint than

to guide, to consecrate a noble past than to furnish a key for the future; and the artist in selecting his facts

looked mainly for those which could throw the richest colour upon his canvas. Most experience was in his

eyes (to adopt an image of Coleridge) like the stern light of a ship, which illuminates only the path we have

already traversed; and a large proportion of the subjects which are most significant as illustrating the true

welfare and development of nations were deliberately rejected as below the dignity of history. The old

conception of history can hardly be better illustrated than in the words of Savage Landor. 'Show me,' he

makes one of his heroes say, 'how great projects were executed, great advantages gained, and great calamities

averted. Show me the generals and the statesmen who stood foremost, that I may bend to them in reverence....

Let the books of the Treasury lie closed as religiously as the Sibyl's. Leave weights and measures in the

market-place; Commerce in the harbour; the Arts in the light they love; Philosophy in the shade. Place History

on her rightful throne, and at the sides of her Eloquence and War.'[1]

It was chiefly in the eighteenth century that a very different conception of history grew up. Historians then

came to believe that their task was not so much to paint a picture as to solve a problem; to explain or illustrate

the successive phases of national growth, prosperity, and adversity. The history of morals, of industry, of

intellect, and of art; the changes that take place in manners or beliefs; the dominant ideas that prevailed in

successive periods; the rise, fall, and modification of political constitutions; in a word, all the conditions of

national well-being became the subjects of their works. They sought rather to write a history of peoples than a

history of kings. They looked specially in history for the chain of causes and effects. They undertook to study

in the past the physiology of nations, and hoped by applying the experimental method on a large scale to

deduce some lessons of real value about the conditions on which the well-being of society mainly depends.

How far have they succeeded in their attempt, and furnished us with a real compass for political guidance? Let

me in the first place frankly express my own belief that to many readers of history the study is not only

useless, but even positively misleading. An unintelligent, a superficial, a pedantic or an inaccurate use of

history is the source of very many errors in practical judgment. Human affairs are so infinitely complex that it

is vain to expect that they will ever exactly reproduce themselves, or that any study of the past can enable us

to predict the future with the minuteness and the completeness that can be attained in the exact sciences. Nor

will any wise man judge the merits of existing institutions solely on historic grounds. Do not persuade

yourself that any institution, however great may be its antiquity, however transcendent may have been its uses

in a remote past, can permanently justify its existence, unless it can be shown to exercise a really beneficial

influence over our own society and our own age. It is equally true that no institution which is exercising such

a beneficial influence should be condemned, because it can be shown from history that under other conditions

Historical and Political Essays, by William 10

and in other times its influence was rather for evil than for good.

These propositions may seem like truisms; yet how often do we hear a kind of reasoning that is inconsistent

with them! How often, for example, in the discussions on the Continent on the advantages and disadvantages

of monastic institutions has the chief stress of the argument been laid upon the great benefits which those

institutions produced in ages that were utterly different from our own,--in the dark period of the barbarian

invasions, when they were the only refuges of a pacific civilisation, the only libraries, the only schools, the

only centres of art, the only refuge for gentle and intellectual natures; the chief barrier against violence and

rapine; the chief promoters of agriculture and industry! How often in discussions on the merits and demerits

of an Established Church in England have we heard arguments drawn from the hostility which the Church of

England showed towards English liberty in the time of the Stuarts; although it is abundantly evident that the

dangers of a royal despotism, which were then so serious, have utterly disappeared, and that the political

action of the Church of England at that period was mainly governed by a doctrine of the Divine right of kings,

and of the duty of passive obedience, which is now as dead as the old belief that the king's touch could cure

scrofula! How often have the champions of modern democracy appealed in support of their views to the

glories of the democracies of ancient Greece, without ever reminding their hearers that these small municipal

republics rested on the basis of slavery, and that the bulk of those who would exercise the chief controlling

influence over affairs in a pure democracy of the modern type were absolutely excluded from political power!

How often in discussions about the advantages and disadvantages of Home Rule in Ireland do we find

arguments drawn from the merits or demerits of the Irish Parliament of the eighteenth century, with a

complete forgetfulness of the fact that this Parliament consisted exclusively of a Protestant gentry; that it

represented in the highest degree the property of the country, and the classes who are most closely attached to

English rule; that it was constituted in such a manner that the English Government could exercise a complete

control over its deliberations, and that for good or for ill it was utterly unlike any body that could now be

constituted in Ireland!

Or again, to turn to another field: it is quite certain that every age has special dangers to guard against, and

that as time moves on these dangers not only change, but are sometimes even reversed. There have been

periods in English history when the great dangers to be encountered sprang from the excessive and

encroaching power of a monarchy or of an aristocracy. The battle to be then fought was for the free exercise

of religious worship and expression of religious opinion, for a free parliament, for a free press, for a free

platform, for an independent jury-box. All the best patriotism, all the most heroic self-sacrifice of the nation,

was thrown into defence of these causes; and the wisest statesmen of the time made it the main object of their

legislation to protect and consolidate them.

These things are now as valuable as they ever were, but no reasonable man will maintain that they are in the

smallest danger. The battles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been definitely won. A kind of

language which at one period of English history implied the noblest heroism is now the idlest and cheapest of

clap-trap. The sycophant and the self-seeker bow before quite other idols than of old. The dangers of the time

come from other quarters; other tendencies prevail, other tasks remain to be accomplished; and a public man

who in framing his course followed blindly in the steps of the heroes or reformers of the past would be like a

mariner who set his sails to the winds of yesterday.

It is difficult, I think, to doubt that the judgments of all of us are more or less affected by causes of this kind. It

is, I imagine, true of the great majority of educated men that their first political impression or bias is formed

much less by the events of their own time than by childish recollections of the more dramatic conflicts of the

past. We are Cavaliers or Roundheads before we are Conservatives or Liberals; and although we gradually

learn to realise how profoundly the condition of affairs and the balance of forces have altered, yet no wise

man can doubt the power which the first bias of the imagination exercises in very many cases through a whole

life. Language which grew out of bygone conflicts continues to be used long after those conflicts and their

causes have ended; but that which was once a very genuine voice comes at last to be little more than an

insincere echo.

Historical and Political Essays, by William 11

The best corrective for this kind of evil is a really intelligent study of history. One of the first tasks that every

sincere student should set before himself is to endeavour to understand what is the dominant idea or

characteristic of the period with which he is occupied; what forces chiefly ruled it, what forces were then

rising into a dangerous ascendancy, and what forces were on the decline; what illusions, what exaggerations,

what false hopes and unworthy influences chiefly prevailed. It is only when studied in this spirit that the true

significance of history is disclosed, and the same method which furnishes a key to the past forms also an

admirable discipline for the judgment of the present. He who has learnt to understand the true character and

tendencies of many succeeding ages is not likely to go very far wrong in estimating his own.

Another branch of history which I would especially commend to the attention of all political students is the

history of Institutions. In the constantly fluctuating conditions of human life no institution ever remained for a

long period unaltered. Sometimes with changed beliefs and changed conditions institutions lose all their

original utility. They become simply useless, obstructive, and corrupt; and though by mere passive resistance

they may continue to exist long after they have ceased to serve any good purpose, they will at last be

undermined by their own abuses. Other institutions, on the other hand, show the true characteristic of

vitality--the power of adapting themselves to changed conditions and new utilities. Few things in history are

more interesting and more instructive than a careful study of these transformations. Sometimes the original

objects almost wholly disappear, and utilities which were either never contemplated by the founders or were

only regarded as of purely secondary importance take the first place on the scene. The old plan and symmetry

almost disappear as the institution is modified now in this direction and now in that to meet some pressing

want. The first architects, if they could rise from the dead, would scarcely recognise their creation--would

perhaps look on it with horror. The indirect advantages of an institution are sometimes greater than its direct

ones; and institutions are often more valuable on account of the evils they avert than on account of the

positive advantages they produce. Not unfrequently in their later and transformed condition they exercise

wider and greater influence than when they were originally established; for the strength derived from the long

traditions of the past and from the habits that are formed around anything that is deeply rooted in the national

life gives them a vastly increased importance.

There is probably no better test of the political genius of a nation than the power which it possesses of

adapting old institutions to new wants; and it is, I think, in this skill and in this disposition that the political

pre-eminence of the English people has been most conspicuously shown. It is difficult to overrate its

importance. It is the institutions of a country that chiefly maintain the sense of its organic unity, its essential

connection with its past. By their continuous existence they bind together as by a living chain the past with the

present, the living with the dead.

Few greater calamities can befall a nation than to cut herself off, as France did in her great Revolution, from

all vital connection with her own past. This is one of the chief lessons you will learn from Burke--the greatest

and truest of all our political teachers. Bacon expressed in an admirable sentence the best spirit of English

politics when he urged that 'men in their innovations should follow the example of Time itself, which indeed

innovated greatly, but quietly, and by degrees scarcely to be perceived.'

There is a third department of history which appears to me especially valuable to political students. It is the

history of those vast Revolutions for good or for ill which seem to have transformed the characters or

permanently changed the fortunes of nations, either by a sudden and violent shock or by the slow process of

gradual renovation. You will find on this subject, in our country, two great and opposite exaggerations. There

is a school of writers, of which Buckle is an admirable representative, who are so struck by the long chain of

causes, extending over many centuries, that preceded and prepared Revolutions, that they teach a kind of

historic fatalism, reducing almost to nothing the action of Individualities; and there is another school, which is

specially represented by Carlyle, who reduce all history into biographies, into the action of a few great men

upon their kind.

The one class of writers will tell you with great truth that the Roman Republic was not destroyed by Cæsar,

Historical and Political Essays, by William 12

but by the long train of influences that made the career of Cæsar a possibility. They will show how influences

working through many generations had sapped the foundations of the Republic--how the beliefs and habits on

which it once rested had passed away--how its institutions no longer corresponded with the prevailing wants

and ideas--how a form of government which had proved excellently adapted for a restricted dominion failed

when the Roman eagles flew triumphantly over the whole civilised world, and how in this manner the

strongest tendencies of the time were preparing the downfall of the Republic, and the establishment of a great

empire upon its ruins. They will show how the intellectual influences of the Renaissance, the invention of

printing, and a crowd of other causes, many of them at first sight very remote from theological controversies,

had in the sixteenth century so shaken the power of the Roman Catholic Church, that the way was prepared

for the Reformation, and it became possible for Luther and Calvin to succeed, where Wyckliffe and Huss had

failed. They will show how profoundly our theological beliefs are affected by our general conception of the

system of the universe, and how inevitably, as Science changes the latter, the former will undergo a

corresponding process of modification. Creeds that are no longer in harmony with the general spirit of the

time may long continue, but a new spirit will be breathed into the old forms. Those portions which are most

discordant with our fresh knowledge will be neglected or attenuated. Although they may not be openly

discarded, they will cease to be realised or vitally operative.

In the sphere of politics a similar law prevails, and the fate of nations largely depends upon forces quite

different from those on which the mere political historian concentrates his attention. The growth of military or

industrial habits; the elevation or depression of different classes; the changes that take place in the distribution

of wealth; inventions or discoveries that alter the course or character of industry or commerce, or reverse the

relative advantages of different nations in the competitions of life; the increase and, still more, the diffusion of

knowledge; the many influences that affect convictions, habits and ideals, that raise, or lower, or modify the

moral tone and type--all these things concur in shaping the destinies of nations. Legislation is only really

successful when it is in harmony with the general spirit of the age. Laws and statesmen for the most part

indicate and ratify, but do not create. They are like the hands of the watch, which move obedient to the hidden

machinery behind.

In all this kind of speculation there is, I believe, great truth, and it opens out fields of inquiry that are of the

utmost interest and importance. I have, however, long thought that it has been pushed by some modern writers

to extravagant exaggeration. As you well know, there is another aspect of history, which, long before Carlyle,

was enforced by some of the ablest and most independent intellects of Christendom. Pascal tells us that if

Cleopatra's nose had been shorter, the whole face of the world might have been changed, and Voltaire is never

tired of dwelling on the small springs on which the greatest events of history turn. Frederick the Great, who

was probably the keenest practical intellect of his age, constantly insisted on the same view. In the vast field

of politics, he maintained, casual events which no human sagacity can predict play by far the largest part. We

are in most cases groping our way blindly in the dark. Occasionally, when favourable circumstances occur,

there is a gleam of light of which the skilful avail themselves. All the rest is uncertainty. The world is mainly

governed by a multitude of secondary, obscure, or impenetrable causes. It is a game of chance in which the

most skilful may lose like the most ignorant. 'The older one becomes the more clearly one sees that King

Hazard fashions three-fourths of the events in this miserable world.'

My own view of this question is that though there are certain streams of tendency, though there is a certain

steady and orderly evolution that it is impossible in the long run to resist, yet individual action and even mere

accident have borne a very great part in modifying the direction of history. It is with History as with the

general laws of Nature. We can none of us escape the all-pervading force of gravitation, or the influence of

the climate under which we live, or the succession of the seasons, or the laws of growth and of decay; yet man

is not a mere passive weed drifting helplessly upon the sea of life, and human wisdom and human folly can do

and have done much to modify the conditions of his being.

It is quite true that religions depend largely for their continued vitality upon the knowledge and intellectual

atmosphere of their time; but there are periods when the human mind is in such a state of pliancy that a small

Historical and Political Essays, by William 13